by L. A. Banks
Nearly blind with rage, Azrael leaned on the railing with both forearms, trying to see beyond the horizon into the next dimension until the rail glowed white-hot.
“You’re going to cause a deck fire if you don’t channel this properly, mon,” Isda said calmly.
Bath Kol was on Azrael’s flank. “Listen, as long as you’ve got that key—”
“You told me that already,” Azrael yelled, pushing away from the rail. “But standing around and doing nothing doesn’t help her!”
“Burning yourself out doesn’t either, brother,” Gavreel suggested soothingly. “Let’s think this through strategically.”
“Think, wait … what the hell!” Azrael said now, pacing.
“That is exactly where Asmodeus wants you to be,” Pas-char said calmly. “In hell. In your mind. So you can’t think.”
Aziza walked up to the gathering of men with Melissa and Maggie and stood in front of Azrael. “You’re connected to her, you know.”
Tempering his response out of respect, even though the words wouldn’t form, he nodded.
“May I see the key?” Aziza held out her hand. It wasn’t a request.
Azrael looped the chain over his head and gave it to her, watching her study it.
“The book was gold, right? Quartz crystal around it and gold?” She looked up at Azrael but Bath Kol nodded.
“Yeah,” Bath Kol said, and took out a cigarette.
“A key is usually symbolic of male energy, yet this silver key, silver being the feminine principle, is going into a male book.” She stood on the deck holding the key, absorbing from it as the chain dangled between her graceful fingers and Azrael’s nerves frayed down to a nub. “You’ve been trying to locate her, right?”
“C’mon, ’Ziza,” Bath Kol said, lighting up. “What kinda question is that? The man here is losing his freakin’ mind and—”
“You’ve been trying to go into her mind for knowledge, trying to locate her by forcible entry, and the people who have her aren’t worried about her—they’re worried about you. So, fall back. Surrender.”
“What?” Azrael walked in a small circle, trying to keep his voice modulated when responding to Aziza.
“Let her come into you,” Aziza said quietly, then closed her eyes. “In fact, there are three sisters here. She can come to us, rather than us trying to chase her down.”
No one spoke for a few minutes as Aziza scanned the environment for impressions with her mind.
“Paschar, that’s why your visions aren’t connecting with her, either. You aren’t allowing her impressions to come into you … you are chasing her, running her down to capture her thoughts. All with good intent, of course, but it doesn’t work that way under these circumstances. Old paradigms are falling away. It is a return of the feminine principle.”
Aziza opened her eyes and laid a hand on Azrael’s arm. “Come. Sit. You need to be healed before you can complete this mission.”
“No offense, Aziza, but I need to kill something. When I’m done, you can heal me.”
Steadfast, she blocked his attempt to step around her. “No. In order to find her, you have to use the lessons we learned in the village. At every turn, we’ve been given signs. What did we learn there? That we cannot do it alone—you cannot do it alone.”
Azrael let out a hard breath, uncomfortable with the reminder.
“Pride goeth before a fall, man,” Aziza said, frowning. “You of all people know that.”
“Wow … she went there,” Bath Kol said with a low whistle.
“Dat’s cold, ma,” Isda said in a dejected murmur.
“It’s the truth,” she said, folding her arms over her petite breasts with the key firmly clutched in her hand. “Tell him, BK. I can turn his chakras inside out, and he needs that right now. In fact, didn’t that little boy teach your big, burly ass anything about surrender in order to conquer the dark?”
“Surrender is my Achilles’ heel, I admit,” Azrael said in a low rumble.
Aziza sucked her teeth and then pointed to a chair. “Go, sit!” She spun on the group as Azrael moved to a deck chair and plopped down in it. “This man is the one among us who is most injured, but unlike the child, not only doesn’t he accept that he’s been mortally wounded by the abduction of Celeste, he rejects a collective effort to try to take this pain from him. Pain is sickness, dis-ease of the mind, body, and spirit. So, we are going to surround him like we did for that child and we are going to send so much love, so much Light, so much hope, into him that his spirit will be bright enough for Celeste to see through the darkness clouding her head. And, then, he is going to be receptive—open—yielding to accept in her transmissions to him so he can see her … and we’re gonna get on our knees beside him and be his training wheels until he gets this receiving thing down cold. Then he can go kill something. Agreed?”
“Yes,” Azrael said as others joined in. He stared up at the petite women who stood before him with her arms folded looking as though she were ready to have a street fight. “I’m sorry. You’re right. This thing is tearing me up, Aziza.”
“Ashé,” she murmured, getting down on her knees in front of him and taking up his hands.
Hers were so small within his as she pressed the key between their palms and she kissed the backs of his hands. “We’re gonna get her back, honey. I know this to be true, but you’ve gotta believe.”
His brothers and sisters in battle slid beside Aziza and fit in all around him. She bowed her head and led the prayer, pelting stanzas with “Ashé, amen, and so it is!” Her fervent energy channeled in from all the others’ energy took hold of his spinal column, layering Light and current where trauma had blacked out sections. Then she placed her hand over his chest, pressing the key to his heart chakra, making warmth bloom within the once-heavy cavity. Soon that warmth spread to his lungs and through his torso and down his limbs. Peace was there but so was determination.
“Feel her,” Aziza murmured, now placing both hands on his chest with her eyes closed. “Remember everything you love about her and invite her into this space of Light within you and then be still … suspend all thought. Just feel her warmth coming into you.”
Azrael could feel his brothers’ wings gently brushing his shoulders and arms as they surrounded him, then they faded like the breeze. Melissa’s and Maggie’s slow, easy breaths melted into the night. Aziza’s hands, like hot stones, disappeared into the heat that became Celeste’s smile … and her laugh … and her sigh … and her warm embrace. Her sad, sad smile and distant gaze out of a window drifted on a tear that ran down his cheek. Then her eyes became his eyes as he looked out from them from a villa on the Red Sea.
“Baby … where did they take you?” he murmured, feeling her breaths become his breaths.
I don’t know … but they are taking me home. Go home.
“To heaven … or to our home?” he said on a quiet exhale of her breath.
Philly.
“Are you hurt?” he said, tracing his bottom lip and tasting blood. “Who struck you?”
Rahab, the wind told him as the Nile lapped against the ship’s hull.
“I love you so much, baby. I’m coming for you.”
No … let me show you what they have planned. Then come to me. I love you.
Images poured into his mind, reverberating against the darkness of his worst fears and deepest rage, and soon the images rippled through the group, entering each person who touched him until it was over and they were left spent.
Azrael sat up, then stood up and rubbed both palms down his face. “Thank you, Aziza. I am forever in your debt.”
“You all have to leave us; we’ll just slow you down,” Aziza said quietly, and looked at Bath Kol. “We can catch a flight out of Luxor so we don’t have to go all the way back to Cairo, if Isda can arrange it. But we’ll be protected. They don’t want us and don’t want to jeopardize you giving them the key. Some of the brothers that escorted us over can escort us back, but you have to go and warn
the others.”
Bath Kol came to her and held her hands and then suddenly hugged her. “Didn’t we do this before, Aziza? You told me that before and they burned the temple to the ground with you in it. You didn’t come back for lifetimes. We’ll figure out—”
“Shhhh,” she whispered, and kissed him gently. “You have to go. I eventually came back when it was time, and it’s probably far more dangerous what you’re about to walk into than me catching a flight with the girls home.”
“You are minimizing, woman, I know you,” he said, dropping his head against her shoulder.
She rubbed the broad expanse of his shoulders by hugging him tightly and reaching up and under his wings. “Walk through the ether and don’t look back.”
Gavreel folded Maggie into a winged embrace, and Paschar took Melissa into his arms and shielded their deep kiss with his plumage.
“We’re gonna get her back, mon, seriously,” Isda said, landing a hand on Azrael’s shoulder. “And all in one piece.”
Azrael looped the key over his neck and rubbed it. “Absolutely.”
“Take a memo,” Asmodeus said, staring at a hooded messenger demon as its eyes began to glow. “Go find Azrael and tell him that I have something of his of value and he has something of mine, and I’d like to do an exchange.”
The demon nodded and lowered his scythe. “I will need protection, given his state. And how will I find him?”
Asmodeus stood and went to Celeste. He stroked her cheek, then slapped her, opening up the cut on her lip. He tore a bit of fabric from his sleeve as she angrily glared at him while straining against the nylon ties that held her. When he wiped her lip with the fabric, she spit in his face.
“Perfect,” he murmured, and wiped his face with the bloody fabric, then handed it to the demon. “This is bait. He was last seen around Philae but is probably heading back toward Aswan where he came down from this afternoon. He has to have made camp somewhere. Put this cloth out there in the desert and come to him as a swarm. Become many insects with very tiny heads or I assure you he will take yours.”
Blood on the wind made Azrael lift his head from his top-deck meditation and push away from the rail. Total panic electrified his limbs. The sense of complete powerlessness made him grind his teeth. He’d been waiting for Isda to secure the women’s safe passage back to the United States, then the brothers would walk through the ether as a unit to return early to Philadelphia. But now Celeste’s blood was in the air? Intolerable.
Wings spread, he ran across the deck and launched himself into the air. Moonlight turned the golden desert sand an eerie blue-gray, and he spotted a piece of cloth that had her signature on it … her blood, her sweat, the sweet saliva from her mouth. Panic made him hit the sand in a one-knee crouch. But as soon as he pulled the strip of fabric out of the ground, it was as though he’d detonated a grenade, and he knew he’d been set up.
Thousands of vicious, biting scarabs frothed from the sand, tearing at his skin, infesting his wings, burrowing into his skin, and trying to enter his nose and mouth. He stood up like a burning force of nature, jettisoning the refuse from him by going still for two seconds, then glowing blue-white hot, causing the evil little beetles to scream and crackle-fry. Then off in the distance the insects converged into a tall black pillar that soon resolved into the injured body of a hooded messenger demon.
The wicked creature stared at him with a sinister grin, maggots crawling through the putrefied skin of its skeletal face. Its eyes gleamed red and cruel as it gripped its scythe with rotting, skeletal hands. “The master says you have something of his, avenger! He will make a trade.”
“Tell him yes,” Azrael shouted. “Tell him to meet me in Philadelphia—where I can return her safely to her home and her people.”
“You are in no position to bargain,” the demon said smugly, then hissed.
“Nor are you,” Azrael said calmly, then with lightning speed threw his blue-white battle-ax.
Asmodeus smiled as a demon head burst through the air with a sizzling battle-ax and cleaved into his floor.
“He homed it to the demon’s energy, which brought it back to us. Very dangerous that he’s aware we are so near. Our only saving grace, not that we have such a thing anymore, is that he’s showing amazing restraint because of the girl,” Rahab said calmly, kicking the smoldering head away and making the ax clatter to the floor.
She waited until the weapon slowly disappeared into the ether before going to retrieve the head. Picking it up by its bloody hood, she brought it to her scrying table in Asmodeus’s office.
“Hmmm, so what did the avenger say? How did he take the threat?” Forcas smiled and placed a finger to his lips. “From the looks of things he didn’t take it well and definitely killed the messenger. Just a guess, but I don’t think he’s in a hostage-bargaining mood, milord.”
“Stop toying with that disgusting thing and read the response,” Asmodeus snapped, then eyed Forces with a warning when he smiled.
After a moment Rahab looked up. “You broke him.” She stared at Celeste and smirked at Celeste’s horrified expression. “An angel violating the ultimate rule, and he’ll trade the lives of humanity all for her. Really? Do you know how many angelic Laws that violates—to turn away from one’s mission to be concerned about all of humanity to only care about one mere mortal … if you are not a Guardian Angel? This is so rich!”
“You must have interpreted incorrectly,” Asmodeus said, walking up to the table and shoving her aside.
“Feel for yourself,” Rahab said, folding her arms. “He’s panicked and worried and will do a trade in her hometown tonight.” She threw back her head and laughed. “The man is totally smitten by her. Oh, you should feel this, and so naive that he thinks if he gives us the key, she can just go back to West Philly like none of this ever happened. How cute.”
“Do you know how many wars in antiquity began because of a woman? How many betrayals and poor strategic moves were made because a man or a general was blinded by emotion? I never thought that I would live to see the day that the Angel of Death was so moved.” Asmodeus shook his head. “Pull her through a demon door and set up the ritual elements on the Philadelphia site. We raise an army tonight!”
“It’s awfully quiet, mon,” Isda said in a low mutter as they crept around the building that was only five hundred feet north of Independence Hall.
Bath Kol nodded. “Too quiet. The Liberty Bell Pavilion sits just east of the mansion in what was the president’s garden, according to the map. We need to get an aerial view—but if they’ve got gargoyles on patrol in the building rafters, not good.”
“You think they took the bait?” Paschar glanced at Gavreel.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Gavreel whispered, then made a fist.
They all looked at Azrael.
“I don’t like you going into that center alone, mon.”
“Either I walk in there alone or they send her out in pieces,” Azrael said, keeping his eyes on the building. “And she can still live so they wouldn’t be violating the Law. They can chop off her fingers, her ears, her toes, shear sections of flesh off her body, or send me her beautiful eyes in a bag, and leave her alive for a human ambulance. She would survive, but I would not.”
He stood and walked across the wide street. There was nothing left to discuss. Asmodeus’s demons were already here. He could smell their sulfur. Bodies moved within the glass-enclosed structure. They’d defiled the building and, deep within it, had set up for a ritual—he could see that right through the glass.
His old nemeses stood back by the wall as he took in the horror of what they’d done to Celeste and what they were about to visit upon the world. A glass sarcophagus with ancient gold bones was in the center of a pentagram with Celeste also tied to a chair, the tablet in her lap, waiting on the key, blood dripping from her arm into a chalice set on the floor. Black candle flames licked the air and added tallow to the sulfuric sick stench wafting off the demons.
Eyes filled the ceiling rafters. A carpet of insects waited for the order to devour. Snarling beasts haunted the shadows. Asmodeus’s inner circle of fallen brandished weapons, remembering their deaths at his hands. Malpas, Appollyon, Bune, Onoskelis, and Pharzuh, killed by Celeste, all wounded and rotting and seething for their chance to exact revenge. Forcas bowed and smiled a vicious grin. Celeste looked so weak that she could barely lift her head. The sight of that alone was enough to make his eyes glow white-hot with pure warrior-angel rage.
Asmodeus stepped out of a fold of darkness with Rahab. She left his side and went to the pentagram and dipped her finger into Celeste’s blood.
“You are the Angel of Death and yet you have a problem with death,” Asmodeus said, smiling. “Ahhh, just like the self-righteous, you talk a good game, but when it comes to you following the same rules …” Asmodeus wagged his finger at Azrael. “Are you sure you can still go home? Or are you banished, like us? What other bad things have you done while here?” Asmodeus turned and laughed with his demons, but his inner circle of fallen didn’t even smile. “You are standing on very shaky ground, Azrael. Why not join us? The pay is excellent, the benefits are Cadillac … you can even have her back when we’re done.”
“Our deal was that I get her now and walk out of here with her unharmed.” Azrael looped the key over his head and dangled it in front of Asmodeus, allowing a battle-ax to fill his other hand. “All I want is her.”
“You would allow me to raise an army that could wipe out half of humanity, for her?”
“We’re early. Twelve twenty-one twelve is a couple of weeks away yet. Much can happen in that time.” Azrael swung the key back and forth like a taunting pendulum. “We conquered the army of darkness before when it was full strength; I have no problem doing so again. So we will meet on the battlefield soon enough, but she is not a part of our conflict. Take it or leave it.”
“You’re surrounded,” Asmodeus said calmly. “Look around.”
